This week in Occupy, Scott Walker is sadly still Wisconsin’s governor, a judge ruled the indefinite detention provision of the NDAA to be unconstitutional, Occupy won major victories in New York and Seattle, Occupy Fresno became the longest-running encampment in the country and everyone who was anyone wrote the Movement’s obituary.

#On the eve of the vote to recall Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, the Overpass Light Brigade made one last visit to the Ring Street pedestrian bridge in Milwaukee with an illuminated message. Nevertheless, in an election so heated one in three Wisconsinites reportedly stopped speaking to each other because of political disagreements, union-busting governor Scott Walker held onto his post. And no wonder: he had 14 billionaire donors, 13 of whom were from out of state. Make no mistake: the 1% is spending billions to squash organized labor.

#A federal judge has ruled that the White House cannot use the NDAA to indefinitely detain American citizens.

#U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff ruled that a lawsuit brought by Occupy Wall Street demonstrators against NYPD for the arrest of 700 peaceful protesters who tried to cross the Brooklyn Bridge last October can proceed, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg, police commissioner Raymond Kelly and the city cannot be defendants in the suit. Rakoff said that video shows the NYPD leading protesters onto the bridge and toward certain arrest, adding that the films “show what should have been obvious to any reasonable officer, namely, that the surrounding clamor interfered with the ability of demonstrators as few as 15 feet away from the bullhorn to understand the officer’s instructions.” He opened his opinion with this rather eloquent paragraph:

“What a huge debt this nation owes to its ‘troublemakers.’ From Thomas Paine to Martin Luther King Jr., they have forced us to focus on problems we would prefer to downplay or ignore. Yet it is often only with hindsight that we can distinguish those troublemakers who brought us to our senses from those who are simply troublemakers. Prudence, and respect for the constitutional rights to free speech and free association, therefore dictate that the legal system cut all nonviolent protesters a fair amount of slack.”

#Occupy Fresno celebrated 246 continuous days of occupation in Courthouse Park, making it the longest-running encampment in the country. Another reason for celebration: Fresno County reached an agreement with the occupation, ending a long and costly legal battle that saw more than a hundred peaceful protesters arrested over the last eight months. In exchange for protestors dropping their lawsuit over free-speech violations, the county will allow demonstrators to protest overnight in the park and pay $37,000 in legal fees.

Photo: Occupy Seattle

#Officers trying to serve an eviction notice shot a St. Louis homeowner after lobbing tear gas into his home, prompting him to barricade himself inside. Wounded in the elbow, the victim unbelievably faces criminal charges.

#A Seattle judge has ruled that 16 activists were not trespassing after they occupied a vacant Capitol Hill building in December. Charges have been dropped.

#A number of obituaries were written for the Occupy Movement. RT asked, “Is this the End of Occupy?” Adbusters said, “Yes, and we’d better think of something else, fast. I know – flash mobs!” Reuters agreed that we’d jumped the shark, while Salon suggested we ditch the “Occupy” label. But Policy Mic proclaimed us alive and kicking, and Bill Maher, who’d previously minimized the Movement, broke down and admitted that we’re the nation’s only hope, we just need some discipline. Others asked if anarchists are the second generation of Occupy – or does the future of the movement belong to enterprising DIYers focused on the environment? (How about both?)

#Occupy Wall Street protesters showed up in Albany to present Governor Cuomo with a fake $2 million check.

Mormons for gay pride in Salt Lake City. Seriously.

#In Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania (not to be confused with that Jersey Shore), residents joined forces to blockade the entrance to town in an effort to stop Aqua America from displacing homes and ruining the environment with a new fracking facility. Occupy Cleveland drove in from four hours away to help.

#Two activists on a hunger strike #occupied a Denver campaign office of President Obama to demand that he sign the DREAM Act, which would allow children of illegal immigrants to attend college or join the military as a way to achieve legal citizenship. President Obama’s campaign released a written statement saying that he wants the DREAM Act to pass, and that he would sign it, but it is stalled in Congress and passing it would require that “Republicans stop standing in the way.”

#Five members of Occupy Milwaukeewere arrested after they allegedly disobeyed police orders to stay on the sidewalk during a downtown protest that drew roughly 40 protesters (who were naturally flanked by 30 officers). Later, as the police chief briefed reporters about the arrests, protesters shouted him down.

A casseroles rally in Washington Square Park. Photo: Mickey Z-Vegan

#100 members of Occupy Chicago took to the streets to protest police infiltration, targeted repression and the use of entrapment tactics by law enforcement of activists involved with Occupy and the NATO summit protest. Some carried photos of suspected infiltrators. In addition to accusations of COINTELPRO-like tactics employed by law enforcement, protesters also criticized the money the city spent on security measures for the summit, saying that it could be better spent elsewhere.

#In an action supported by Occupy Houston, 3,200 union-affiliated Houston janitors voted to strike over threats and misconduct by janitorial contractors for some of Houston’s biggest corporations. Janitors in the city earn about $9,000 a year.

#Occupiers in Hong Kong have been asked to leave the premises of the Asian headquarters of HSBC Holdings, where 50 have pitched tents and laid out couches. They’ve refused. Occupiers also offer music and photography instruction and give away books. “We don’t normally talk about sharing anymore in this capitalistic society, everything needs to be exchanged at a certain cost. We don’t like this idea,” said Jojo Wong, a 22-year-old bookstore clerk who drops by the site before and after work. “That’s why we offer free music, books and lessons at the very heart of the financial center.”

#Occupy LA members, housing rights advocates and local homeowners rallied outside the district office of State Senator Ron Calderon to urge him to support legislation enacting the California Homeowners’ Bill of Rights, which would extend more protections to homeowners who face foreclosure. Calderon has mixed views on the bill, wanting it to be both “strong” but “workable.” Occupiers are worried that “workable” may turn into “weak.”

#Ivonne Quiroz #occupied her graduation at San Francisco State University, sporting a ball and chain around her ankle to symbolize her student debt.

#To Verizon, paying out the $22 million salary of one CEO is worth firing 1,700 workers.

#The Yes Men have returned with a hoax video of a private party purportedly hosted by Shell Oil atop Seattle’s Space Needle. If only that PR disaster had been real…

#Nearly 300 Mormons marched in a gay pride parade, holding signs that read “God Loves His Children” in a unique display of support from believers of a religious tradition that has long opposed homosexuality.

#On June 5, Rev. Corey Brooks, known as “the rooftop pastor,” embarked on a 3,000-mile walk across America to call attention to the violence plaguing Chicago and to raise money to build a community center. He set out this week from Times Square before heading to Newark and onto Philadelphia. He plans to be in Chicago by July 15, ending the walk in Los Angeles in about four months.

#The Oakland Police Department’s nine-year-long struggle with federal oversight took a significant turn, as a federal judge demanded an investigation by court-appointed monitors into police shootings involving OPD officers and speculated openly about placing the department under federal control.

#Of the nine Occupy the Farm protesters who were arrested for occupying the U.C. Berkeley-owned Gill Tract, two will be facing charges. Several of the protesters are facing off with the U.C. Regents in civil court. The Gill Tract was raided May 14.

#An independent report concerning police response to last Fall’s U.C. Berkeley protests found that officers strayed from campus policies and norms in their use of force against protesters and called on the university to better explain when the use of force is appropriate. Members of the campus’s independent Police Review Board were particularly “disturbed” by the swift use of batons.

#In July, eleven students and one professor at the U.C. Davis will stand trial for the “willful” and “malicious” act of protesting peacefully in front of a U.S. Bank branch on campus, which they successfully shut down. They face 11 years in prison.

#After being convicted by a district court of impeding traffic during a November protest, Occupy Asheville member Lisa Landis, who claimed she’d been targeted for filming the demonstration, was sentenced to time served. Unhappy with the ruling, she appealed to have her case heard by a jury, which took less than 10 minutes to acquit her.

#Marc Moran, a photographer who just wanted to snap a photo of this week’s demonstration in Chicago, was arrested along with a dozen protesters, and his film was confiscated. “It looked like a photo opportunity,” he said.”So I went to go snap a picture and next thing I know I was being apprehended in cuffs.”

Student protesters disrobe for a protest in Montreal on May 3. Photo: Vincenzo D'Alto

#Occupiers in Providence have been banned from the local Providence Place Mall for a year after they rallied there in support of higher taxes for the rich. Police handcuffed the demonstrators and removed them from the mall, only releasing them when they accepted the one year ban. Occupy Providence stated in part, “Using handcuffs on peaceful protesters exercising their rights to free speech was clear intimidation and completely unnecessary.”

#Evicted families in Seville have #occupied an empty apartment complex that lacks power and water, and they want more to join them. Evictions have run rampant in Spain, with as many as thirty to a block losing their homes. The complex was completed in 2010, but because of the financial crisis none of the apartments were ever rented out. Shades of Caracas.

#Stop-and-frisks do nothing to lower shootings. But you wouldn’t know that by listening to police commissioner Ray Kelly, who said in defense of the racist policy, “We’re saving lives. Mostly young men of color.” Someone needs a fact-checker before opening his mouth. And he’s not the only one: NYPD spokesperson Paul Browne told the Queens Chronicle that the arrest of multiple journalists covering Occupy Wall Street is “a total myth.” Which is, of course, a total myth. Josh Stearns sets the record straight regarding journalist arrests via Storify.

A candlelight vigil in Hong Kong in remembrance of the 23rd anniversary of Tienanmen Square. Photo: Occupy Earth

#In another blow to the NYPD, eight Muslims filed a federal lawsuit to force the department to end its surveillance and other intelligence-gathering practices targeting Muslims in the years after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

#A former attorney who worked for some of the country’s most prestigious law firms was sentenced to a record 12 years in jail for an insider trading scheme which lasted 17 years and netted more than $37 million between 1994 and 2011.

#The states with the worst income inequality are Florida, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Connecticut and – no surprise here – New York.

#Tens of millions of children are living in poverty in the world’s richest countries.

#Unpaid internships are a way for wealthy companies to extract free labor. So dump your internship and head to the beach.

Image: NSW Prison Watch

#Good news, activists: Google has hit back against state-sponsored hackers who may be reading your Gmail.

#The Department of Homeland Security has reportedly detained a developer of an anti-surveillance app on multiple occasions.

#A new generation of computerized cameras are able to spot if you are a terrorist or a criminal before you even commit a crime. Because life has apparently become Minority Report.

#600 protesters crashed the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal. Pepper spray was deployed and a line of riot police advanced, arresting 28.

#The Mexican student movement is ascendant, buoyed by the political bias of the mainstream media. If only Americans would feel similarly compelled to action over our slanted, corporate media.

#Following her exclusive interview with Bashar al-Assad last December, Barbara Walters tried to use her influence to help one of the Syrian dictator’s former aides get a job. Here are the incriminating emails.

#A charitable group called Chosen 300 will pay your fines if you ignore Philly’s new ban on feeding the homeless. That’s right – Philadelphia has instituted a ban on giving poor people food.

#The number of PhD recipients on food stamps and other forms of welfare more than tripled between 2007 and 2010.

#The fight for women in Egypt is far from over, as a mob of hundreds of men assaulted women holding a march demanding an end to sexual harassment. Attackers overwhelmed the women’s male guardians and groped and molested several of the female marchers in Tahrir Square. From the ferocity of the assault, some of the victims said it appeared to have been an organized attempt to drive women out of demonstrations and trample on the pro-democracy protest movement.

#A new bank study suggests the average Canadian household is more than $100,000 in debt and that Canadians have ramped up borrowing in the past five years.

#An oil spill in Alberta sent 125,000 gallons of crude spilling into a tributary of the Red Deer River.

#Monsanto corn has been linked to organ failure in rats. Meanwhile, five million farmers are suing the GMO purveyor for $7.7 billion because the company has been reportedly taxing the farmers into financial ruin with hefty royalty charges.

#Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry’s and Move to Amend want to stamp money-is-not-politics messages on dollar bills.

#Immortal Technique said in an interview that our ignorance hurts the world.

Matt Lawrence of Occupy New Hampshire protests outside an event held by Congressmen Frank Guinta and Darrell Issa.

#On June 15, Occupy London will stage the first-ever Carnival of Dirt, whereupon 30 activist groups from London and around the world will highlight the illicit deeds of mining and extraction companies.

#Members of Occupy Austin OccuQueers and GLITUR (affiliated with Occupy Seattle) are reaching out to all Occupy Queer and LGBT working groups to form a national (or international) network of radical queers.

Occupy Denver staged a Canadian student solidarity march on June 1. Photo: lthnmsrtk

This week in Occupy, the Cruz home at 4044 Cedar Avenue in South Minneapolis became a national flashpoint for the Movement, overthrown Egyptian former dictator Hosni Mubarak was sentenced to life in prison, Canadian solidarity had everyone wearing red, the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall sparked a frenzy among politicians and activists alike, and an Occupy Yale activist left us far too soon.

#Occupied: The Cruz home in South Minneapolis. Photo: Michael A. Shapiro

#Occupy Homes MN protestors are condemning Minneapolis police and Mayor R.T. Rybak after 14 were arrested defending the home ofAlejandra Cruz and her family from foreclosure. 100 protestors gatheredto link arms around the home – which has been blockaded from eviction by occupiers for the past month – and successfully fought off raids three times in two days, forcing sheriffs and police to retreat. The Minneapolis police chief doesn’t even want to foreclose anymore. Freddie Mac, the current holder of the Cruz family’s mortgage, hired round-the-clock private security, who called the police to enforce the May 31 raid. PNC Bank, which originally held the Cruz loan, has repeatedly assured the family that they are working to resolve the issue.

#Hosni Mubarak, Egyptian former dictator and casualty of the Arab Spring, was sentenced to life in prison. For thousands of Egyptians, the overthrown autocrat’s sentence was too lenient: protesters in particular want Mubarak to pay with his life for his brutal regime.

#On May 29, Occupy Chicago rallied against the police brutality employed during the NATO protests and demanded compensation for ”lost income, lost stability and treatment costs from trauma [police] inflicted upon [protesters].” While the mainstream media has praised Chicago PD for the supposed restraint officers demonstrated, it is clear they simply trained their cameras away from police violence.

As We Were: Occupy activist Marina Keegan with her parents shortly before her death.

#Marina Keegan, an Occupy activist and recent Yale graduate, died in a car accident on May 26. Around campus and in the pages of the New York Times she took on Wall Street campus recruiting practices as part of an action known as Occupy Morgan Stanley. “I’m just not convinced that the most productive use of 25 percent of my graduating class’s time is to spend two or three years pushing figures around spreadsheets to make more money for those with the most money,” she wrote in November.

#The #WIrecall of Governor Scott Walker, who is just the third governor in U.S. history to face a recall, will be decided on June 5. Occupy Appleton held a Solidarity Sing Along to get out the vote. Walker holds a narrow lead over Democratic opponent Tom Barrett, but Democrats are confident they’ll win the state senate. The drive to oust the despised governor was spurred by anger over his plan to effectively end most public workers’ collective bargaining rights, and the wave of activism that followed paved the way for Occupy Wall Street. Here’s some historical context courtesy of Daily Kos.

#On May 30, Occupy Wall Street marched for affordable education and against police repression in solidarity with the massive, ongoing student uprising in Quebec. Just as demonstrators have done in Argentina, Chile, Spain and throughout Canada, OWS banged pots and pans in a practice called casseroles or cacerolazo. In a similar gesture of solidarity, the Movement has also thrown its support behind the uprising in Mexico.

The Overpass Light Brigade took their anti-Walker LED messages to Wisconsin bridges along I-94.

#Occupy Buffalo helped convince the city council to divest from JP Morgan after its $2 billion trading loss. The city comptroller agreed to transfer $45 million of sewer authority funds from a JPMorgan Chase account to local bank First Niagara Financial Group after Occupy raised concerns.

#Los Angeles’s Arts, Parks, Health, and Aging Committee has proposed a ban on all forms of overnight camping and pitching tents in city parks. The City Council will vote on the measure next week. City officials say the measure is not meant to target Occupy LA, which they claim cost $2.3 million in cleanup costs last Fall.

#Occupy Cal protesters have amended their lawsuit against U.C. Berkeley to demand $15 million following a November protest where police officers confronted occupiers following the removal of tents. They are demanding $7.5 million in compensatory damages for physical and emotional harm and denial of Constitutional rights, $7.5 million in punitive damages, and insistence that the school redress the protesters for “false arrests and UCB’s political witch hunt” against them.

#In an attempt to avoid possible mass arrests, Occupy Tampaannounced it will not be protesting in the official protest zone during the Republican National Convention on August 27. ”It wouldn’t do any good for all of us to get thrown in jail,” said Christopher Kuleci, a member of Occupy Tampa’s media team. “There are plenty of other places where delegates are going to be, where our messages will better be heard.”

#A push to raise the minimum wage amid a political stalemate broughtOccupy Albany to the Capitol on May 29, where protesters delivered letters urging Governor Andrew Cuomo to persuade his allies to take up a bill passed by the Assembly that would bump the minimum wage to $8.50 an hour, from the current rate of $7.25. “A living wage is possible, this movement is unstoppable! It’s shameful and outrageous!” demonstrators chanted from the Capitol’s ornateMillion Dollar Staircase. Six were charged with misdemeanor trespassing.

#Members of the Occupy Movement joined an international coalition of union members, community leaders, disenchanted shareholders and residents of countries Chevron has polluted to protest the oil giantduring its annual shareholder meeting in San Ramon, California, on May 30. 73% of shareholders in attendance at the meeting rejected a move to disclose more about fracking methods. Chevron is facing $43 billion in fines stemming from contamination, explosions and tax-dodging in multiple countries.

#More than two dozen high school and community college students #occupied the UCLA admissions office on June 1, demanding the university double the enrollment of black, Latino and American Indian students because the current student body does not demographically resemble Los Angeles. Thirteen were arrested.

#Marking a recent resurgence, Occupy Tulsatook to the streets on May 31 in support of local Oklahoma schools facing major budget cuts.

#After more than eight months of march and parks permit requests, a national petition campaign and threats of legal action, the city of Charlotte granted conditional approval for permits for a march on Wall Street South on September 2, one day prior to the Democratic National Convention.

#On May 24, after a four-month public campaign to bring attention to injustices in the workplace, employees at a Manhattan Hot and Crusty restaurant voted to certify an independent union, the Hot and Crusty Workers Association.

#Occupy protesters and Tea Party activists alike protested this year’s secretive Bilderberg Conference in Chantilly, Virginia. Activists from across the political spectrum are arguing that U.S. citizens attending the controversial confab are potentially committing a felony by violating the Logan Act, which forbids unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments. Here’s a list of the annual conference’s high-powered attendees.

#Billionaires for Romney, a satirically-named protest, greeted the Republican presidential candidate as he attended a fundraiser at the Balboa Club in ritzy Newport Beach, California.

#Fight for Philly activists chanting “We Are the 99%!” crashed Comcast’s annual shareholders meeting on May 31 in protest of its tax-dodging strategies and in an effort to persuade the cable giant to suspend its membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. Comcast, the nation’s largest cable distributor, controls MSNBC through NBCUniversal, which it owns in a joint venture with General Electric.

#In the latest rebuke for Oakland’s violent police, a federal judge has ordered a probeinto how Oakland PD investigates officer-involved shootings, threatening the department with sanctions if misconduct is uncovered.

The June issue of The Occupied London Times.

#Florida governor Rick Scott continues hismassive statewide voter purge, stripping suspected non-citizens from the rolls in defiance of a Justice Department order, and despite objections from county elections officials and evidence that a disproportionate number are voters of color. In fact, Scott has ordered more “ineligible” voters to continue to be purged. The state’s plan to review the status of the 2,600 suspected non-citizens and purge them if the voters fail to prove citizenship appears to violate the 1964 Voting Rights Act and the National Voter Registration Act, the DOJ said.

#Occupiers like Philadelphia police captain Ray Lewis inhabit roles in society that d0n’t naturally lend themselves to activism. But since the ascendance of Occupy, siding with the people they vowed to serve and protect is indeed a radical notion in many police departments. They don’t call it The Thin Blue Line for nothing.

#Occupy activists offer lessons learned from their victorious labor campaign against Sotheby’s auction house in New York on behalf of art handlers with Teamsters Local 814, who won a new three-year contract on May 31.

#George Martinez – adjunct politics professor at Pace University, hip-hop artist, cultural ambassador for the State Department and the first Occupy Wall Street activist to secure a place on a Congressional ballot – will challenge Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.) in the June 26 Democratic primary.

#Launched on June 2, Occupy Kensington in Brooklyn plans to tackle such issues as raising the minimum wage, securing back wages for employees of a local grocery and the area’s lack of open space.

#The Riverdale Mobile Homes Park in rural Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, has become an unlikely nexus of resistance to corporate power after residents were booted to make way for a pump station that will divert up to three million gallons of water per day from the Susquehanna River to fracking operations in the north.

#A hunger strike at Red Onion, Virginia’s only supermax prison, has ended. Four dozen prisoners began the strike on May 29, demanding an end to poor conditions, ongoing abuse and the practice of solitary confinement.

#After it was revealed that two dozen Republican lawmakers in the Oregon Legislature are members of ALEC, Common Cause asked the IRS to investigatewhether the group is a lobbying organization.

#Wal-Mart has suspended its membership in ALEC, which the retailer joined in 1993. It joins Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods, McDonald’s, Procter & Gamble and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who all ended their association with the conservative lobbying group after the Trayvon Martin murder exposed its role in crafting Stand Your Ground legislation.

#One out of every five people stopped by the NYPD last year were between the ages of 14 and 18 and 86 percent of them were black or Latino, confirming that stop-and-frisk policies target young people of color. Stop-and-frisk arrests in 2011 topped 120,000.

#Iran’s state-owned news outletreported that Occupy protesters are conspiring to wage a civil war in the United States. Wishful thinking?

#Greece’s Coalition of the Radical Left has no desire to bring back the drachma, but also does not believe that staying in the euro requires the massive cuts in government spending to which Greece’s leaders have agreed as a condition of receiving international assistance over the last two years.

#Though he vehemently denies it, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad continues to slaughter his own people, blaming unnamed “terrorists and extremists” for the bloodshed. Defending his regime’s crackdown against the opposition, al-Assad likened it to a surgeon performing an operation: “When a surgeon in an operating room cuts and cleans and amputates, and the wound bleeds, do we say to him, ‘Your hands are stained with blood?’ Or do we thank him for saving the patient?” Countries around the world expelled Syrian diplomats after a massacre in Houla killed 90 men, women and children in their homes.

#Many of our nation’s largest and most respected universities are screwing their own students (further) by outsourcing basic financial operations to private banks. Student loan debt, which recently topped $1 trillion, is crippling the nation’s young adults in their prime.

#After NYPD testimony was disproved at two OWS arrest trials, police officers have been no-shows when they’re called to testify. Why? “Mass arrests were being used as a tactic, as a weapon to stop the expressive activity and to chill people from participating,” explained Norman Siegel, an Occupy attorney and former head of the NYCLU. “Even if the city arrests people and there’s no conviction, so what?” Adjournments and postponements have pushed many trials to the Fall.

#After two NBC journalists were handcuffed and threatened by Chicago police after attempting to report on the murder of a six-year-old girl, a police officer was caught on camera telling members of the media, “Your First Amendment right can be terminated if you’re creating a scene or whatever. Your First Amendment right has got limitations.” Huh?

Union Square, New York, June 3. Photo: Stacy Lanyon

#After a vice-president in Citigroup’s mortgage unit discovered the bank was buying mortgages from outside lenders with doctored tax forms, phony appraisals and missing signatures, she was asked to hide the findings – and refused. She sued and won a $31 million settlement with the help of the Justice Department.

#SunTrust Bank’s mortgage unit has agreed to pay $21 million to resolve allegations that it charged more than 20,000 African-American and Hispanic borrowers higher fees, costs and interest rates for home mortgages than non-Hispanic, white borrowers.

#Here’s the corporate cabal trying to prevent you from knowing what’s in your food.

#In an interview with Huffington Post, rapper and occupier Talib Kweli said, “You can’t just sit at your computer and be an activist. You have to get out there in the streets. You have to physically get up there and get your body on the line and put your life on the line to express your thoughts and what you believe.”

#Jeremy Scahill, investigative journalist and author of an award-winning expose of Blackwater, called Obama’s drone strikes in Yemen “murder.” Asked why he’d use such a loaded word, he explained, “It’s murder – it’s mass murder – when you say, ‘We are going to bomb this area because we believe a terrorist is there,’ and you know that women and children are in the area.”

#Members of India’s transgender and hijra community convened in New Delhi for the first Hijra Habba, where they discussed ways to ameliorate the persistent discrimination that marginalizes Indian transgenders.

The Maple Spring, Canada, June 2012.

#The Pentagon would like to expand the U.S. military’s might to cyberspace with Plan X, an ambitious effort to develop technologies to improve its cyberwarfare capabilities, launch effective attacks and withstand the likely retaliation. To this end, the Pentagon is turning to the private sector, universities and even computer-game companies.

#Federal agencies and local officials have recently sent powerful but conflicting messages to the American public about our right to record.

#At least one mainstream media outlet is fulfilling its duty to democracy: The Los Angeles Times has unmasked dark money donors, including the Center to Protect Patient Rights, an opaque nonprofit institution that helped steer about $55 million in conservative cash to other opaque institutions during the 2010 election cycle.

#Screw the Black Bloc – what you should really be afraid of is the Blue Bloc.

#Kanye West and Jay-Z’s new video, “No Church in the Wild,” is being described as a riot porn-y rip-off of the Occupy Movement. You decide.

#Here’s a real-time U.S. debt clock, broken down into handy categories to help you better understand the horror. If you recall, the national debt clock mounted in midtown Manhattan needs to be renovated to reflect the trillions we now owe.

Bryant Park, June 2. Photo: Stacy Lanyon

#Across the country, hundreds of TV stations are circumventing ownership rules at the expense of independent local journalism. Save the News has created a nifty interactive chart to find out if newsrooms in your area are merging.

#Urban Dictionary’s word of the day for May 31 was Wall Street, and the user-generated site had some creative definitions for the HQ of the country’s 1%.